The Mashup: Anthea and Meridian Dress
Late last year I had been searching for a pattern for this Liberty of London fabric that I splurged on earlier in the year. I was looking for something as magical as the fabric itself and just felt like all the options I had kept falling short. I then rang in the New Year and decided I wanted to use as much as I could from my stash, including patterns. As I was searching through I found the Meridian dress from Paper Cut Patterns. I had made this pattern three times before and then I had placed it to the side. Probably because there’s an invisible zipper in there and honestly, I wasn’t going to wear anything with an invisible zipper as we were quarantining and surviving the last two years. I looked at it again and really loved the twist detailing under the bust but I wasn’t feeling the rest of the silhouette. I placed it down on top of my Anthea Blouse pattern from Anna Allen Clothing and then it hit me. I really couldn’t believe it. I had been searching by this point for about 3 months for the perfect pattern and then just like that the stars aligned. I was going to make the Meridian dress with the Anthea Blouse sleeves and a full gathered skirt.
Fast forward a couple of months and I still had not made any progress on this idea. I didn’t have any sewing juice left in the tank and I was busy with so many other things; I just wasn’t sure I wanted to make a dress that needed me to trace and adjust patterns. But I sucked it up one night and just did it, and surprisingly it didn't take that much time at all. I used the slash and spread method for the existing sleeve to get the volume I wanted. I then grabbed my anthea blouse and used the dimensions of that to ensure I had the shape similar. It was very do as you go and see where it takes you. For the gathered skirt I just cut out two rectangles.
The sew up was pretty straight forward. It gets a bit fiddly attaching the gathered skirt to the bodice, but I took it slow and it worked out fine. The invisible zip, on the other hand, could have been better. It had been about 3 years since I had to put one in and well…it showed. I ended up redoing it and it looks a lot better, but I might need to start doing this more to get those skills back up to par.
Now that the sewing talk is out of the way, let’s discuss the fabric. That’s the real star of the show. My friend Ellen McKenna had reached out about using her fabrics, which I was more than happy to do. I had used Ellen’s fabrics a lot in the past, so when she messaged, you know I was right on board. She’s got such a unique perspective and my brain just feels so happy when I get to look at her fabrics. She has been building out her fabrics on offer on Spoonflower so I got to pick from some pretty amazing options. Let me tell you, it was very hard. I landed on this print called “Neon Garden”. It just looked so cool online and then when it came in I just about died. It was the prettiest thing I had laid my eyes on that day. I was in love. I also forgot to mention that I obviously didn’t end up making this dress pattern in the Liberty fabric mostly because I forgot about it when Ellen’s fabric arrived. So it’s safe to say I just trusted my instincts with this make from start to finish and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.
